E-LEARNING, E-TEACHINGBY DR. ROSER NOGUERA MASUNECA, ADDIS ABABA (SEPTEMBER, 2015)

USING BLOGS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING

WHAT IS A BLOG?• A blog is a type of website. A blog is short for weblog, which is a simple

online diary that allows you to publish, date and list your periodic thoughts, opinions and musings on a particular topic or idea, generally in reverse chronological order (i.e. whatever you publish last appears first)

• Blogs enable users to post regular entries (or blog posts) and these can include news, comments, descriptions of events, photos or videos.

• There are many free blog services, and blogs are very easy to use and have a clean, professional look that makes them very attractive to use.

• To blog is also a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.• A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages,

and other media related to its topic. • Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even

message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites, and makes them particularly attractive in teaching and learning.

You can use blogs:• As a source of reading material for your classes,

• To create a class blog for your students,

• Or blog yourself!

BLOGS• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY5acLmS3RQ

• Most blogs are mainly text-based, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcast).

• Edublogs are blogs with an educational goal: to help in the process of teaching-learning within an educational context.

Glossary of Blogging Terms

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BLOG SEARCH ENGINES

To find relevant blogs, you can use a blog search engine. The best ones are: • Technorati, • BlogScope, • Google Blog Search. You can search for blogs or blog postings about specific topics

Task 1• To find 5 blogs about tourism in Ethiopia in the language you teach and share them in Edmodo.

• To make a comment in a blog, take a picture and share it in Edmodo.

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Why would I want to use blogs and blogging in my teaching?A blog provides “a genuine audience, is authentically communicative, process driven, peer reviewed, provides a disinhibiting context and offers a completely new form with unchartered creative potential” (Ward, 2004: 3)

Because…1. The regular practice of

reading and writing is very useful in learning a language, particularly in distance learning, independent study and blended teaching contexts.

2. Blogs are a useful tool to use in your teaching, both a source of reading material and as a way to structure writing activities and peer reviewing.

1. For reading

Blogs are an excellent source of up to date reading material: encourage your students to find a blog they really enjoy and subscribe to it. This should be motivating, and provide a real reason for reading!

2. To disseminate student generated content

A blog can be a window into your classroom. You can encourage your students to post their work there (especially if you use the blog for a particular project): students often get an immense sense of satisfaction from having their work “published”, and blogging is indeed a form of publishing.

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3. For sustained, regular writingBlogging regularly has been shown to have a positive impact on learners’ writing fluency and to increase their motivation to write for a broad audience. You might want to encourage your students to keep a blog that they post to regularly (like a diary or journal), or set up a class blog and encourage students to take turns to write blog postings.

4. For discussion and peer reviewBlogs offer students an opportunity to interact with peers and to learn from each other. Because they enable readers to post comments to blog postings, they offer a forum for discussion. For instance you could encourage students to post about culture, politics, travel, or other areas of personal interest, and ask other students to comment on posts they find interesting. Feedback from your peers on your blog posts can be enormously motivating.

5. To increase opportunities for interaction outside the classroom

Students can comment on each others’ blog posts outside the classroom. This contributes to creating a sense of community, and takes learning and peer interaction outside the confines of the classroom.

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6. For reflection and evaluation

Blogs are often used as a tool for reflection. For instance, students can have a personal blog that they use as a journal of their learning experience.

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7. As a portfolioBecause they can include photos and videos, and links to other sites, as well as “regular” text postings, blogs are an easy way to get students to produce a multimedia portfolio, documenting their work during a course or a work placement, for instance. You as teacher can comment if appropriate and, like any other portfolio, it can be submitted as part of the assessment.

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Code of conduct (Tim O'Reilly)• 1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for

the comments you allow on your blog. • 2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments. • 3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments. • 4. Ignore the trolls • 5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find

an intermediary who can do so. • 6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them

so. • 7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in

person.

Working with images• Select an image: https://eatropia.wordpress.com/page/2/#

jp-carousel-1794• Brainstorm for words you associate with it. • Write without stopping and in full sentences whatever

comes into their mind. It can be a description, a dialogue, a few verses, the beginning of a story, a dream…

• Make a suggestion about how to improve it (correct a mistake, use a different word, etc.)

• Polish the piece of writing and publish it in the class blog.• Comment the photo.

Language activities• Passive activities: Students are the audience. Activities

like reading documents, listening songs, maps, etc.• Active activities: Students are producers of contents, for

example texts like a digital postcard, a post, a wiki, etc.• Interactive activities: Students are producers and

receptors, they participate in an authentic bidirectional process of communication, for example an email or a videoconference.

Montserrat CASANOVAS CATALÁ

From the paper book to the digitalBASIC TASK TASK 2.0

1. To elaborate a questionnaire to know your classmates

To create a personal blog and introduce yourself

2. To decide what you want to do during the course according to your interests and learning goals

To log in a social network for language learning and find a person to do a linguistic interchange. To write in your blog about an ICT interesting source

3. To plan a weekend in a Spanish city To create an audio-guide of any city around the world and publish it on your blog

4. To create a campaign to prevent traffic accidents or health problems

To elaborate a presentation of the campaign and publish it on your blog

5. To write a poem following Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s greguerías model

To elaborate and share a multimedia presentation on Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s greguerías

6. To investigate a criminal case and write an story

Collaborative or podcast recording for your blog

7. To create a business company and design a TV spot

To record a video and link it on your blog

8. To elaborate and debate a program about a better future for our society

To write a comment in a podcast and a review about the podcast

Blog designMost blogging services have templates that enable you to select a design, and then customise it by changing the colors, font and layout. This enables users to create attractive looking blogs very easily. Page elements (posts, archives, etc.) can be dragged and dropped into different parts of the page to suit your preferences.

Access ControlsThis is probably the most important feature to think about when you start a blog: it lets you decide who can write on your blog (for example, you can set up the blog and then invite all your class to be writers, so it becomes a communication tool for your class) and who can read it (you might want to restrict this just to your class, or open the blog up so that it can be read by anyone). You might decide that rather than have a single blog for your class, students will set up their own individual blogs which they can keep private (for reflection, or to use as a portfolio), or share with others (everyone, or selected individuals, such as their class members and you as their teacher). Examples of Blog Reader settings: a) Only people you choose can read the blog b) Only blog authors can read the blog:

CommentsYou can allow anyone to give feedback on your posts, or make the feedback visible only after you have checked it out yourself. You can also delete any comments you don’t like. This is particularly useful if you have a class blog that is readable by anyone: you might want to encourage external readers to leave comments on your students’ work, as it can be very motivating, but at the same time be able to exercise control over what comments get published, to screen out spam or offensive comments, for instance.

Photos

You can also easily add photos to your blog, which will make it even more attractive. Photos in blogs can also be a great focus for language teaching activities. http://plainjoephotoblog.com/wp-content/themes/

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Languages

Many blog service providers localize their products, so they are available in different languages. Blogger is available in more than 40 languages, so you can easily change the language of the interface to suit your context.

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Autoevaluation• I can describe blogs and blogging to others briefly. • I can give three reasons for using blogs or blogging in

language teaching.• I can describe and use basic features of blogs.• I understand the pedagogical benefits of using blogs and

blogging in my teaching. • I understand practical considerations around setting up a

blog.

Conclusion1. Blogs are helpful for E-learning.2. Informal channel of communication between teachers and

students. 3. To promote social interaction (socializing in and out the class,

sharing common interests).4. Blog is a personal media to reflect about the way we learn and

teach (e-portfolio).5. Digital identity6. Students have their voice7. Visibility to your work8. To offer materials related to class contents9. To build a learning community (space to debate (feedbacks), think,

comment, to write about common interest news).10. Real audience (teachers and students read what others write)

Task 2To classify:• Blogs from the students point of view• Blogs from the teachers point of view

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Blogs on language teaching• Blogs about news related to language teaching.• Teacher blogs: reflections and experiences as teachers• Blogs about meetings, workshops, conferences, etc.

(usually directed to colleagues).

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Language teaching blogs• Teacher-students blog in a course• Teacher blog in a course• Students blog in a course (usually related to other

students’ blog and to the teacher’s blog).• Student blog used as a portfolio or learning diary to reflect

about his/her improvement, cultural experiences, etc.

Who are they writing to?http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/TEFL Matters. Language teaching, teacher education & new technologies.http://www.inglesonline.com.br/Tips for those who learn or teach English.http://www.teachingvillage.org/Blog made by a passionate teacher, which is especially about teaching English to young learnershttp://teacherrebootcamp.com/Ideas & challenges for teaching ELLshttp://kalinago.blogspot.com/Teaching EFL teachers how to teach speaking.

RSShttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

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Ideas for our blog• Title?• Gmail account?• Porpoise/ Goals?• Who are our potential readers?• Who is in charge?• Social networks (Twitter, Google+, Facebook)• Who would like to participate and how often?• Languages?• Contents? (Drive document for ideas)

Bibliography• “Using blogs for language teaching” (used in this

presentation)http://ict-rev.ecml.at/Portals/1/documents/Using_Blogs_for_language_teaching.pdfHUFFAKER, D.: «The educated blogger: Using Weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom», Firstmonday, Vol. 9 (6), junio 2004.http://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1156/1076